Regional Total Natural Resource Abundance Degree and Its Measurement Method

Natural resource abundance degree（NRAD）is an important economic index of measuring a national or regional natural resource endowment. According to the NRAD's definition, three levels of NRAD including the monomial NRAD, some kind of NRAD and regional total NRAD and the characteristics of regional total NRAD were analyzed. Then, the detailed method of measuring the regional total NRAD was put forward. Finally, an empirical study using twenty kinds of natural resources in 31 provinces, municipals and autonomous regions in 2010 was done. The results showed that：（1）There are some contradictions between relative abundance of natural resource and its distribution structure in natural resource endowment in China；（2）There are five provinces of rich natural resource endowment, twelve of moderate endowment, eight of poor endowment and six of deficient endowment；（3）Among China's 31 provinces, municipals and autonomous regions, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Guangxi and Hebei provinces rank top five respectively in NRAD, while Jiangsu, Ningxia, Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing are the last five.